Burning to solve waste problem?

Apart from the sheer volume of waste, there is also the question of plastics such as bottles, containers, wrappings and shopping bags, some of which will survive in the ground for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Some of us now have the benefit of wheelie bins, but this system appears to have been an own goal for the authorities. Wheelie bins are much larger than the former household dustbins, but we tend to fill them. This often means that more than twice as much rubbish is put out for disposal by each household with a wheelie bin.

I appreciate that this is a very simplified theory, and I have taken no account of commercial waste, but the fact is that society as a whole is generating far more waste than ever before, and its effective disposal is increasingly causing problems.

So could the humble household bonfire be one solution? In some areas, bonfires have been banned because of the smoke or aerial pollution they generate, but is this any worse than filling our land with pollutants and plastics which will take centuries to be absorbed into the earth? A bonfire will consume them in minutes.

A bonfire is not a modern convenience by any means. In fact, it dates deep into our history and the name comes from bonefire.

Bones were burnt on large outdoor fires - a very effective method of waste disposal - but whose bones were they? No-one seems totally sure.

Some theories suggest they were the bones of the dead being effectively disposed of, others support a notion they were sacrificial fires, even with human victims, but a more general belief is that most of those bonefires were a means of getting rid of the unwanted bones of cattle, sheep, pigs etc.

It is known, however, that in pagan times, sacrificial bonefires were held at the important festivals of Beltane, Midsummer and Hallowe'en.

Beltane was celebrated on May 1, Midsummer was the period of one week around the solstice (June 21) and Hallowe'en, once known as Samain, was on October 31. This was the last day of the year in the old Celtic calendar.

It was believed these fires brought good fortune in several different ways. They helped to strengthen the power of the sun at critical times, they were considered fertility symbols because they helped the crops to flourish, and they were also thought to prevent diseases in livestock.

Indeed, many stock owners drove their cattle through the flames in their efforts to prevent diseases and as recently as 1851 such a fire was publicly kindled at Troutbeck in the Lake District as a remedy for cattle plague.

Earlier, in 1834, a similar fire was ignited near Carlisle as a form of protection during an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

In these latter two cases, the fires were lit by need-fire. This was the relic of a pagan custom which had continued for centuries in spite of the Catholic church condemning it in AD 742.

In some cases, a healthy beast was sacrificially burnt on these fires as an added means of deterring disease.

Need-fire was specially kindled in public by using the friction method and then used to ignite bonfires.

The tip of a wooden peg, usually of oak, was rapidly turned in an oak log by teams of men until it produced sparks or a small fire. When the spark or flame appeared, it was caught in dried straw or bracken and then carried to a previously built bonfire.

In some areas, the new flame was carried from house to house in the village, and in Scandinavia, the men who produced the flame had to be free from any kind of guilt. Neither could they have any metal objects upon their bodies as they worked on creating the fire.

This need-fire was variously known as a beltane fire, bale fire, wild fire, will fire, neat fire, forced fire and even running fire.

Once a bonfire was lit from this source, young men would leap through the flames to purify themselves and bring good luck, and in some areas cattle were driven through the dying embers rather than the flames as a means of preventing disease.

The ashes from bonfires lit by need-fire were then scattered across the fields to bring good fortune to growing crops, and sometimes they were taken into the homes as a form of protection against evil.

The old testament contains references to children being passed through the flames of bonfires as a sacrifice to Moloch, the god of the Ammonites, and at the time of Solomon, fire was considered a form of purification.

Now, in this country, household bonfires are forbidden in many areas, but could there still be a role for them in the purification of our own land?

Although country people know that the worst of the winter may yet arrive in the coming weeks, there can be signs of spring in the hedgerows at this very early stage.

One of those signs will be displayed on the hazels. It is one of the mysteries of nature that the hazel catkins, often known as lambs' tails, can mature as early as January or February when they might be thick with pollen.

Botanists and meteorologists have studied these flowers in an attempt to determine any reason for this early development, but it seems that hazel catkins can open as early as January in some areas and as late as March in others.

Even those growing in mild and sheltered places can open late, so it appears that their location, or the state of the weather, is not the main determining factor.

During the autumn, when the leaves have fallen, the very young hazel catkins can be seen on mature trees - those at least seven years old - but at that stage they will be small, firm and green, rather like miniature cylinders.

As winter progresses, they will lengthen and their scales will loosen until they are almost a couple of inches long and very pliant.

They then become covered with rich yellow pollen, but this is where nature compensates for the lack of pollinating insects.

The catkins are the male flowers, but the same branch will bear female flowers. These are tiny buds with small red tassles emerging from them.

They can appear in January, but are not easy to find, even on bare branches and twigs, and it might be necessary to search very carefully.

As the winter winds shake those mature catkins, or perhaps as birds rest on the bare branches or squirrels run along them, so the catkins will be shaken and the pollen will then drift away to settle upon the females.

Severe frosts can kill both male and female flowers but, hopefully, these will eventually become hazel nuts.

It's a long process, for it takes most of the year for the nuts to mature, quite surprising for such a fast-growing tree.

Few hazels actually reach the size of a full-grown standard tree. Many grow in hedgerows, where they are regularly trimmed, and others are coppiced - cut back to ground level once every few years so they produce those long, slender and flexible shoots.

These have a variety of uses, such as making fences, hoops for beer casks, baskets, walking sticks and shepherds' crooks, hurdles for livestock and even the frames for small boats called coracles or panels for wattle and daub houses!

In connection with my notes about bonfires, hazel was one of the nine woods sacred to the Celts which were used to kindle need-fire.

Superstitious links continued until fairly recent times, when hazel twigs bearing catkins were taken into farm buildings in the belief they helped protect the sheep at lambing time.

Further magical qualities of hazel were believed because the hazel rods could be used to detect veins of buried metal in the ground, and it was also favoured by water diviners.

The Celts honoured the hazel for all manner of reasons, believing it was associated with poetry, knowledge, fire and fertility.

Now, of course, it is known that raw hazel nuts contain, weight for weight, 50pc more protein, seven times more fat and five times more carbohydrate than hens' eggs.

There's every reason for including nuts in our diets, unless we are allergic to them, but if you wish to pick them in the wild, you will be competing with a whole host of animals and birds who have precisely the same idea